


They are half of my soul, as the poets say

by scalira



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/F, Multi, Soulmate AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-21
Updated: 2016-03-21
Packaged: 2018-05-28 04:07:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6314653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scalira/pseuds/scalira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>the name of Kira’s soulmate appears on her skin when she’s young and gets ripped away from her only two years later. She gets a second chance at true love when she’s fifteen and right when she thinks she’s over the loss of her first soulmate, her name reappears on her skin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	They are half of my soul, as the poets say

**Author's Note:**

> written for Kira rarepair week day 1: favorite ship

The first name appeared on Kira’s skin when she was six, and she almost jumped off the swing mid air to show it to her mother. She proudly threw up her arm to show the curly letters on her forearm, spelling out a name that sounded like a poem.

_Malia._

Her mother smiled and sank to her knees to look Kira in the eye. She told her it was unusually early for a name to be written on her skin but that she was very proud. She also warned Kira for the amount of time it could take to find her soulmate, the owner of the name, and that she should always be patient.

“It took me 900 years to find mine,” she reminded her, once again reminding Kira of her extraordinary heritage.

It should be noted that Kira really wasn’t the patient type. She could barely sit still long enough to finish a drawing and she got sent out of class a lot because she kept obnoxiously swinging her legs. So, naturally, she spent entire days looking for her soulmate. She would talk to other girls at her school, asking them for their names and hoping that one would recognize as the other part of their soul. Unfortunately, the only Malia she came across was a girl twice her age, and she didn’t have Kira’s name written anywhere on her skin.

Kira was disappointed, but she remembered to never give up. So she kept looking, asking girls for their names at the mall, on the bus or on the streets of New York. And though they were all very friendly and very pretty, none of them had her name on their body.

A year passed and the letters lost their shine, their bright curls. They faded until they looked like an old tattoo, but Kira still loved them. She often traced the letters with her fingers, imagining what Malia would look like. She hoped she liked being outside just as much as she did so they could go on long walks in the woods when they met. She imagined bruised knees to match her own, summer freckles spread across a pretty face, chipped teeth from falling on the pavement. She wondered if Malia thought about her too, traced Kira’s name as well. She wondered what Malia would hope Kira would be like.

And then another year passed and Kira’s eighth birthday came and went. The name was still there, and she still hadn’t found the girl attached to it. She had recently started writing to her, putting the finished letters in a shoe box and planning to give them to her once their paths finally crossed. She often rambled in them, crossing words and leaving sentences unfinished. The letters felt more like a diary, the way she just wrote down all her thoughts without structure. But she thought Malia would like them anyway. So she told her about her day, about stupid boys at school, about Central Park. She told Malia about how she begged her parents to buy her a cat and she tried to describe her father’s smile when she made him laugh. She didn’t want Malia to miss out on any part of her life.

It was spring when it happened. Looking back to it, Kira remembers every detail about it. The snow had just started to melt, leaving the streets of New York wet and slippery. She’d been helping her dad with the dishes, yabbering on about school and the book she was reading and a puppy she petted that morning and Malia. Always Malia.

She was in the middle of putting away a plate when an indescribable pain shot through her body and she fell to the floor, her mouth twisted in a silent scream.

Her dad had lurged forward, lifting her head off the kitchen floor and yelling her name. But she couldn’t respond. All she could do was lie perfecttly still, hoping the pain would pass. And it did, eventually, leaving a dull aching in her chest.

Somehow, she knew. She knew that, when she looked at her forearm, the name would be gone. But she did it anyway, and she fell into her father’s arms with sobs ripping through her throat.

They held a funeral in their small backyard. No body, no family of the girl, no information other than her first name. Kira stood there long after her parents had gone back inside, grieving over the improvised gravestone. She had made it herself, trying to mimic the curly letters that had once been on her arm.

She mourned a girl she had never known, the name sitting on the tip of her tongue but refusing to spill, and she also mourned herself.

Because wherever Malia went, she took a piece of Kira with her.

* * *

The second name appeared on her wrist when Kira was fifteen. She was doing her homework on her bed, listening to soft music in the background, when a familiar tingling warmed her skin. She looked down on her wrist and smiled when she saw a new, pretty name appear.

_Lydia._

It sounded like a foreign song, like a promise. She tasted the letters on her lips as she spoke them aloud.

“Lydia.”

This time, Kira was more patient. She only asked girls their names when the situation called for it, went to parties just like she did before. She couldn’t stop herself from imagining her though, just like she had before. She imagined long hair, fair skin. She dreamt of full lips, red like blood. Lydia’s voice was soft and pleasant to listen to, and she was smart. She imagined twirly dresses, soft guitar music.

It still hurt to think about Malia, about the Could Have Been, but she couldn’t help but to compare them. Where she had imagined Malia to be wild and free, she imagined Lydia as calm and soft. Malia had been heavy rain and the smell of freshly cut grass, Lydia was a sunny day and the feeling of slipping between freshly washed sheets. Malia had been getting lost, and Lydia was coming home.

Not a day went by when Kira wasn’t scared the name would disappear again, the dull ache in her chest reminding her over and over again that a piece of had been taken and wouldn’t return. She just hoped the feeling of having lost something would go away once she met Lydia, that she would finally feel whole again.

A few more years passed and then she was seventeen and her parents told her they were moving to California, to a place called Beacon Hills. Kira was excited, knowing that moving would give her new opportunities to meet Lydia. Saying goodbye to her friends was bittersweet, but soon she was on a plane to her new home. And as they flew closer to Beacon Hills, she swore she could feel the letters on her skin throb in anticipation.

* * *

Meeting Lydia was just like she expected. She knew it was her from the second she saw her in the hallways, and it was almost like her soul reached out to hers. Lydia’s head jerked towards her when their souls touched and it was as if time stopped around her. Though it was crowded in the hallways of Beacon Hills High, it somehow felt like just them.

They gravitated towards each other like magnets. First, there was the introducing.

“Are you-”

“Your name-”

“On my wrist-”

Kira saw it for herself; her own name on Lydia’s collarbone, beautiful and curly just like Lydia’s was. Then the inviting each other to hang out, the talking. Kira gave Lydia some letters she wrote for her and Lydia read them all, never stopped smiling.

She thought this was it and it was gonna be like this till the end of time, the two of them, but then, one day, the familiar tingling came to her again. Kira was surprised when a new name appeared on her forearm.

Or… an old one?

Back like it never left, curls and all, the name she would never forget.

 _Malia_.

She immediately called Lydia, panic fluttering in her chest like a scared bird. Because how could she have two soulmates, and how could it be the girl that had died nine years ago? When Lydia picked up, all she said was: “I have it too.”

And that was that. They both had the name of a dead girl on their skin, someone who could never complete their bubble of happiness. And somehow, that made it worse. The name was back and so was the feeling of Could Have Been, of Not Enough, of Incomplete.

But then there was a stirring in their friendgroup, a feeling of unease, of something important about to happen. And Lydia told her there was a girl, a girl who had been trapped inside the body of a coyote for nine years. And her name was Malia.

Kira cried in Lydia’s arms that night, remembering the wooden gravestone still in her backyard back in New York, the letters smeared from the rain and time. She had lost her first soulmate when she was young, but now she was back.

They didn’t meet Malia until After, after the possession, after the Oni, after Allison. 

When they finally did, they were warned that Malia was still adjusting, still had the blood of an animal in her veins. She was feral, dangerous, even.

Kira had been right about meeting Lydia (like coming home) but when she saw Malia and her soul recognized her, it wasn’t like getting lost at all. It was like coming home all over again, like seeing something familiar after spending a long time away.

Malia possibly looked dangerous and feral to others, but when Kira saw her, it was very easy to see past her walls. And when they hugged, Malia crumbled unerneath their touch.

They all cried and then they laughed and then they all cried again, pointing at names on skins and kissing away the tears and never, _ever_ , letting go off each other’s hands.

Kira had finally found the two lost parts of her soul , and the only way she was ever losing them again was if someone pried their fingers out of her cold, dead hands.


End file.
